Photo credit: db*photography
One of the objections to social media / networking / learning is, “But we will lose control of the content! They will be able to say anything they want to and that has so many implications. What about personal information? Or intellectual information going public? What will legal say? What if they say something that is not right?”
Answer #1 is: How do you deal with it now when that happens? It is very much the same.
Answer #2 is: Take control by losing it.
It is true, by giving the people the power to create content within an organization and the venue to widely distribute it, you are losing control over the content to a degree. So our focus needs to change from controling the content to controlling the outcome. This is a different mindset.
We have heard so many stories of companies like Dell and Comcast who lost control of the content yet took control of the outcome. If you are not familiar with these stories, go read them – it is worth it to understand. A quote from this post:
Customers leave unsolicited positive comments about the products and services they love every day on blogs, review sites and discussion forums. And for the most part, companies are just as silent.
But not Dell. The company launched its Direct2Dell blog in July 2006 to engage directly and publicly with customers about problems. Though the blog had a rocky start, Dell succeeded in showing even its most severe critics that it was both paying attention and acting on customer feedback.
Losing control in one area gives us power in another.
